The moon

Like the sun, the moon rises roughly in the east and sets roughly in the west. It keeps to its own timetable, however, arriving 50 minutes later every day. If you can't see it at night, that could be because it's far below the horizon. Or it may be in the sky but invisible …

How can something that is usually so bright simply vanish? The moon is mostly solid rock, as dull in its own right as a lump of coal. What makes it shine is reflected sunlight; as the moon orbits the Earth, the portion that is illuminated grows and shrinks over a 29.5-day cycle. When the moon is between the Earth and the sun, no reflected sunlight reaches us (a "new moon"); when it is on the other side of the Earth, the whole of the side that is facing us is lit up (a "full moon").

Binoculars will give you a better view of the surface, but they're not indispensable. Even without them, you should be able to pick out major features like Mare Tranquillitatis, the dark splodge where Apollo 11 landed.

The planets

Remember the nursery rhyme Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star? That's the key to picking the planets out from so many other pricks of light: in clear skies, stars twinkle and planets don't. Those planets that can be seen with the naked eye – Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and, if you're lucky, Mercury – are almost always brighter than the stars as well. To make identification a little easier, they all appear to lie along the same line across the sky, running broadly east to west, closer to the southern horizon in summer, further from it in winter.

Venus is the showiest of all. Prominent after sunset or before sunrise, it turns from "evening star" to "morning star" every 584 days as it overtakes the Earth on its way around the sun. Thanks to its brightness, it has often been mistaken for a UFO. The darker hours belong to reddish Mars, yellowish-white Jupiter, and pale‑yellow Saturn.

Galaxies

There are believed to be hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing millions, billions or trillions of stars. The so‑called "irregulars" have no coherent structure, but others are shaped like spirals, lenses, rings …

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a loose spiral of many billions of stars stretching over 100,000 light years. It includes every star that can be distinguished with the naked eye. Light pollution – and the moon – often blot it out, but on a clear, dark night the mass of stars forms a dimly glowing band across the sky.

The Milky Way's nearest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, appears as a hazy patch near Cassiopeia (see p71); use the deeper V of this W-shaped constellation as an arrow to point you in the rough direction (it will be about three "arrowheads" away). As with many faint objects, you may find it easier to observe Andromeda if you look a little to the side rather than straight at it.

Meteor showers

Every day, the Earth's journey around the sun brings it into contact with fragments of rock and ice known as meteoroids, many of them shed by comets on their own travels through space. Moving at least 6.8 miles (11km) a second, most of these objects burn up from friction long before they reach the ground. The light trails produced are what we call meteors, or shooting stars. A dozen times a year, things get really intense, as the Earth hits a cluster of debris. These meteor showers may last for days, with dozens of "shooting stars" every hour.

For the next 12 months, the main showers to look out for are the Perseids (peaking on 12‑13 August), the Orionids (20‑22 October), the Leonids (16‑18 November), the Geminids (12-14 December), and the Quadrantids (3-4 January). The showers are named after the constellations in which the meteors appear to originate.

The Plough

Find it just once, and the Plough becomes the most recognisable collection of stars in the northern sky – and the most useful, as it enables you to identify Polaris, AKA the Pole or North star. Its seven stars, which are the central feature of the constellation Ursa Major, form a sort of long-handled saucepan. This rotates around Polaris, so at times the saucepan may be standing on its "handle" or upside down. But for now let's imagine it the right way up, with the handle on the left, the pan on the right and the bottom of the pan parallel to the horizon.

To find Polaris, focus on the two stars that form the right-hand side of the pan. The star at the bottom is Merak, the one at the top is Dubhe. Together, they are known as the Pointers. To find Polaris, extend the line that they form four or four and a half times past Dubhe; the Pole star is the brightest star in that little area of sky.

Cassiopeia

Once you've found the Plough, the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia should be a piece of cake. It, too, revolves around Polaris – roughly opposite the Plough, roughly the same size and roughly as far away from the Pole star. Assuming it is presenting itself to you as a W, as opposed to an M, the deeper V will be to the right.

The constellation takes its name from Greek myth. Beautiful but bigheaded, Queen Cassiopeia made the mistake of boasting that she was lovelier than the sea nymphs known as the Nereids. This so infuriated the god Poseidon that he stuck her in the heavens, tied to a chair and condemned her to spend half her nights upside down.

However closely clustered they may appear from Earth, the five stars are far apart. The nearest, Caph, is 54 light years away; the furthest, Tsih, 613.

Orion

According to the ancient Greeks, Orion was a mighty and handsome hunter, who, after many adventures, died from the sting of a monstrous scorpion (or, alternatively, took an arrow from the goddess Artemis). Transformed into a constellation by the great god Zeus, he now chases seven sisters known as the Pleiades (in the form of a star cluster), while himself being pursued by a scorpion (the constellation Scorpius). Beside him are two hunting dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor, and a hare, Lepus.

Orion is at his best in winter, when he is high in the sky. Look for three bright stars in a short, straight line. These are Orion's Belt, surrounded by the four stars of his hands and feet. A faint "sword" of three more stars hangs below the belt; around the middle of these is the Orion nebula, a cloud of gas where hundreds of new stars are being born.

International Space Station

The International Space Station (ISS) races through the ether at around 17,000 miles an hour, carrying its crew of six right round the world every 92 minutes. There have been humans on board, more than 200 miles above our heads, without a break since November 2000. With luck, there will be someone there until 2022. This flying laboratory – the world's ninth inhabited space station – is a joint venture between America, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, and has so far welcomed 202 astronauts from 15 nations.

Click here to find out when you next have a chance of seeing the ISS, how high it will rise in the sky and from which direction it will be coming..

Outdoors, look for a fast-moving speck of light (the ISS crosses from horizon to horizon in a matter of minutes). If it's blinking, you're almost certainly looking at a plane.

Northern lights

Also known as aurora borealis, the northern lights are one of the greatest shows on Earth – or rather above it. Curtains of greenish (or occasionally reddish) light spread across the sky, as charged particles from the sun collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere. In exceptional circumstances the glow may be strong enough to read by.

Unlike meteor showers, say, the lights do not follow a schedule. As the Norwegian tourist board puts it: "Aurora is an unpredictable lady, and you never know when she will decide to turn up."

As the name suggests, the further north you are, the more likely you are to see this phenomenon. But on rare occasions it can even be observed in southern England. You're mostly likely to encounter it in late autumn and early spring, and at times when the sun is active. Check your chances.